(Born; Brooklyn, 14 Nov 1900; Died; North Tarrytown NY, 2
Dec 1990). American composer. He studied with Goldmark in New York and with Boulanger in
Paris (1921-4), then returned to New York and took a leading part in composers
organizations, taught at the New School for Social Research (1927-37) and composed. At
first his Stravinskian inheritance from Boulanger was combined with aspects of jazz (Music
for the Theatre, 1925) or with a grand rhetoric (Symphonic Ode, 1929), but then
he established an advanced personal style in the Piano Variations (1930) and orchestral Statements
(1935). Growing social concerns spurred him towards a popular style in the cowboy ballets Billy
the Kid (1940) and Rodeo (1942), but even here his harmony and orchestral
spacing are distinctive. Another ballet, Appalachian Spring (1944), brought a
synthesis of the folksy and the musically developed, the score being a continuous movement
towards a set of variations on a Shaker hymn.

Other works from the'Americana' period include the Lincoln
Portrait for speaker and orchestra (1942), the Fanfare for the Common Man
(1942), the 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson for voice and piano (1950), two sets of Old
American Songs (1950-52) and the opera The Tender Land (1954). But there were also
more complex developments, especially among the chamber and instrumental works: the Piano
Sonata (1941), Violin Sonata (1943), Piano Quartet (1950) and Piano Fantasy (1957). In the
orchestral Connotations (1962) and Inscape (1967) he completed a journey
into serialism, though again the sound is individual. Other late works, including the
ballet Dance Panels (1963), the String Nonet (1960) and the Duo for flute and piano
(1971), continue the cool triadic style. He was conductor, speaker and pianist, a generous
and admired teacher, and author of several books, among them Music and Imagination
(1952).

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